Why Did You Put the Light There?
Somewhere during Saturday’s workshop, I realized that teaching photography involves answering questions I haven’t consciously asked myself in years.
“Why did you put the light there?”
It’s a perfectly reasonable question.
The problem is that after you’ve worked with light long enough, the first answer that comes to mind is sometimes, “Because that’s where it belongs.”
Which isn’t particularly helpful when you’re the instructor.
Recently, I spent a Saturday with a small group of photographers teaching The Magic of Modifiers, a hands-on portrait lighting workshop. The idea was fairly simple: instead of spending the day talking about lighting, we were going to make photographs.
We moved lights. Changed modifiers. Added reflectors. Took them away. Changed the direction of the light. Changed its size. Changed how much of the room it was allowed to illuminate.
And, naturally, occasionally moved something right back to where it started.
The modifier isn't really the point.
It’s easy to look around a photography studio and become fascinated by all the equipment. Umbrellas, softboxes, grids, reflectors, snoots, barn doors, and assorted contraptions that make a photography studio look vaguely like someone is attempting to communicate with satellites.
But the equipment isn’t really the lesson.
The more important question is: What do you want the light to do?
Sometimes I want the light soft and flattering. Other times, I deliberately want the opposite.
That hard shadow isn’t an accident or something I needed to fix later. It’s part of the photograph. Change the size or position of the light, and you change not only how someone is illuminated, but the entire character of the portrait.
Portrait lighting doesn’t stop being useful when you leave the studio.
We took part in the workshop on location and worked with the environment that was already there
Instead of trying to overpower or eliminate the existing light, the question became how much of it we wanted to keep and what we wanted to add.
We weren’t trying to make the location disappear. The orange structure, pattern, and texture became part of the portrait. The lighting simply gave us control over how our subject fit into it.
But controlled lighting doesn’t always have to look controlled.
Some of the photographs we made on location could easily be mistaken for natural-light portraits. They weren’t. We were still paying attention to the light that was already there, deciding how much of it we wanted to keep, and then adding just enough of our own to shape the photograph.
The goal wasn’t to make someone look at the finished portrait and think, “Wow, look at that flash.”
Ideally, you don’t think about the flash at all.
That’s another part of learning to control light. Sometimes you want it to announce itself. Sometimes you want it to quietly do its job and get out of the way.
Light can whisper or shout.
That’s probably one of the biggest ideas I wanted everyone to take away from the workshop. Good lighting isn’t one particular “look.”
Sometimes the goal is for the lighting to disappear into the photograph. Other times, there’s absolutely no reason for it to be quiet.
For much of the workshop, we deliberately kept the background simple and white. That meant we didn’t have to spend much time worrying about coordinating clothing with different backgrounds. We could concentrate on what happened when we changed the light.
A white background doesn’t necessarily mean soft, bright or traditional. Change the size, direction or placement of the light and the same simple background can feel completely different.
And once we start adding darker backgrounds or color, we have even more choices.
Sometimes we’re trying to make the light feel completely natural. Sometimes we’re using it to create mood, separation, or simply to make the photograph more interesting.
The tools change. The placement changes. Sometimes the number of lights changes. But it always comes back to the same question:
What do I want the light to do?
And Then Someone Asks Why
I’ve benefited from a lot of photographers who were willing to share what they knew over the years, so teaching gives me an opportunity to do the same for someone else.
But teaching has a funny way of turning the lesson around.
When you’ve done something long enough, certain decisions become instinctive. I’ll move a light without consciously thinking through every reason for moving it. I’ll choose one modifier over another because I already have a pretty good idea what it’s going to give me.
Then someone asks:
“Why did you put the light there?”
And I have to stop and actually answer them.
Sometimes explaining what you know is a pretty good way of rediscovering what you know.
Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.
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2 Comments
Sep 7, 2026, 2:25:01 PM
MICHAEL A NEBGEN - Thanks Scott. Interesting and makes me want to do more.
Sep 7, 2026, 11:17:15 AM
Robert Guillemette - Lighting does not need to be hard. Scott points out it is what you want IT to do. Hard, soft, dramatic, or in-between. Learn placement. Learn modifiers. Then have fun.